I Turn Around
First designed as a sports watch for polo, Jaeger-lecoultre’s Reverso has since evolved into a perpetual Art Deco classic
First designed as a sports watch for polo, JaegerLecoultre’s Reverso has since evolved into a perpetual Art Deco classic t
Polo basics: Eight players, split in two teams of four, atop horses that trump a grass field spanning a width of 270 metres. The objective is to maneuver a ball through the opposing team using mallets and scoring it into the goal. These mallets are of varied length, usually suited to fit the player’s arm length and the height of the horse. Fashioned from bamboo, the mallet is used to strike the ball at forceful impacts. A mishit and the mallet could hit anything else in its line of sight – the opponent’s horse or the opponent himself. Even if the game was once classified to be a sport for people of the upper class, the gameplay requires a lot of brute force. Suffice to say, the graceful game isn’t short of violent injuries.
Polo started around the 6th century BC when Iran was called Persia, and it was a national sport played exclusively by people of nobility. Since the first European polo club was set up in the mid 19th century, the game spread to India, where the cavalry unit of the British Army eventually picked up the sport. It was at one match that a British Army officer broke the glass of his watch while in play. César de Trey, a Swiss watch dealer, was present at that particular game and was commissioned to create a watch that was strong enough to weather the sport’s rough elements.
ANTI-SPORTS WATCH
In its characteristic beauty, one would find it harrowing to know that the preReverso was created exactly for this purpose, where the infamous flip was to be a shield to the front-facing watch glass. In pursuit of this creation, de Trey engaged Jacques-david Lecoultre to develop a unique request for a dress watch that would be stylish enough to be worn on and off the polo field.
The man behind the engineering of what will eventually be known as the Reverso is René-alfred Chauvot. In the same year the watch debuted, a patent was requested to register a timepiece that could swivel “by sliding in its base”. The assembly comprised of grooves, pins, and a locking
mechanism, which allowed the central part of the case to rotate 180 degrees, turning the dial-side in. César de Trey began commercialising the Reverso by founding a marketing company with Lecoultre, which was officially named Société de vente des produits Jaeger-lecoultre in 1934, the same year the patent for the Reverso was acquired. The reputation of the Reverso soon spread like wildfire and went beyond polo grounds, eventually being donned by corporate professionals and understated fashion leaders.
TWO-FACES
The design easily earned it the stylistic reputation of taking after the Art Deco era, in tribute to its angular case, grooves, and lugs, and even the script being presented as a set of numerals that’s simply legible. At a time where round watches were deemed the conservative counterpart, a rectangular watch was immediately regarded as an unconventional choice. The revolving underside carries an air of uniqueness; one could commission the side with whatever they desired – an engraved message from a secret lover or even a miniature painting.
Fast forward to the 21st century, the Reverso aesthetic remains effervescent. At this year’s SIHH, JLC shone the spotlight on three new Reverso iterations – Reverso Tribute Small Seconds, Reverso Tribute Duoface, Reverso Tribute Duoface Fagliano Limited – and a ladies’ Reverso One Duetto.
The Small Seconds, since its debut in the 30s, has been brandished with Dauphine-style hands and appliques, and a border minute track that runs against the inner bezel. In its entirety, the timepiece is dipped in a rich shade of burgundy. Ticking within is the manually-wound Calibre 822/2, an in-house ligne movement that has been refined since its primary development from the 1933 model. In colour-coded completion, the sunray-brushed dial is dressed with a matching Casa Fagliano leather strap in the same hue.
The Duoface has been an ingenious concept when it was first introduced in 1994. At that time, a rectangular watch was a bold choice, much less the dual watch face that you could get by flipping one side over the other. The latest edition in the Calibre 854A/2 is fronted by a blue dial, where the second time zone with the day/night indicator is displayed against a silvered Clous de Paris guilloche dial, in stainless steel or a limited edition pink gold case. To match the sunray-brushed dial in blue, the pink gold version is paired with a Casa Fagliano Cordovan leather strap and finished with blue stitching.
The Reverso One Duetto is better distinguished by its narrower profile, and is introduced in a pink gold makeover with a complementary dark red palette. The second time display on the underside reveals a sparkling burgundy lacquer dial with Dauphinestyle appliques. The parallel grooves on the case are also displaced by a brilliant-diamond setting, housing the Calibre 844.